Category: QbyN – Daily Musings

Ah, baseball, more specifically, Major League Baseball (MLB) or, as it’s often called, “Big Leagues,” or “The Bigs.” It is also often referred to as “America’s game,” but that designation is not as clear these days as professional football is now competing for that moniker. Some of you reading this might be wondering, and rightly so, why I, of all people, would be writing about baseball. I have said to many over the years that while I enjoyed playing the game as a kid growing up, I find watching it on television the “equivalent to watching paint dry.” Perhaps this has something to do with growing up in the 50s/60s in Montreal where hockey was the sport. I started skating and playing road and ice hockey before I ever had a baseball glove or swung a bat. When I started to play organized hockey at around eight years old, I dreamt of playing in the National Hockey League (NHL), until I asked my grandfather one day if there were any Jewish hockey players. His response, in his heavy Yiddish accent: “Irwin, Jews don’t play hockey, they own teams!” At ten years old, I didn’t quite know what to make of that. Montreal did eventually get its own MLB team, the Montreal Expos (1969), but by then I was nineteen and had been playing hockey and watching my Montréal Canadiens for far too many years to let baseball enter the picture. Even when I relocated across the country to Vancouver, which had its own hockey team, I was still religiously following and rooting for the Canadiens. Trust me when I tell you I took some flak for that! I may have “followed” the Canucks with respect to stats since I was living in the city, but the team would never usurp my allegiance to Les Canadiens. Never.

I now live in Los Angeles, California, a state that boasts five MLB teams in Oakland (A’s), San Francisco (Giants), San Diego (Padres), Anaheim (Angels), and Los Angeles (Dodgers). There are seven states with two teams (Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas), which means that eight states have nineteen of the thirty teams that make up MLB (63%). One might think that my migration to the south, and in particular Los Angeles, might have converted me into a baseball “fan,” but that is not the case. However, I am a bit of a sports “junkie,” so I do keep up with a variety of sports either in the newspaper or the many online sources that provide a dizzying array of stats and sports minutiae available 24/7. The key word in all of this, as well as above, is the word fan, an intriguing word if there ever was one.

There are multiple origins for this word, including, of course, the shortened form of the word “fanatic,” which comes from the Latin word fanaticus (“insanely but divinely inspired”). The dictionary defines this word as a “person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.” Only when you scroll down to the informal definition of the word does it mention a “hobby” or “pastime,” like sports. If you have ever watched a professional sporting event, either live or on television, and seen adults dressed in ridiculous costumes and with painted faces imploring their team for a win, then you have witnessed fanaticism (a wildly excessive or irrational devotion, dedication, or enthusiasm.” Nevertheless, people can be a fan of a sport without necessarily having a team that they are fanatical about. My wife, for example, loves football, but she does not “have” a team; she just likes the game for the action, and the sounds the game produces. And one can also be a fan without being a fanatic. As a fan of the Canadiens my entire life, I never dressed up in the team’s colors, painted my face, and/or screamed till I was hoarse, watching my team; although I must admit to yelling at the tv in tense moments, if you must know!

The word is also said to be derived from the Latin word vannus, which means “winnowing basket” or “shovel,” used to describe a basket or shovel used for tossing and winnowing grain. There are some who believe that “sports fans were originally called fans because they fanned themselves, or because they were windbags.” I am not so sure about the “fanning” part, but “windbags” sure as hell fits. If you’ve ever been stuck in a room with a true sports or team fanatic, you know exactly what I am referring to. You know, the fan that can tell you not only who his team’s pitcher was for game six of the 1964 World Series, but also knows what color underwear he wore for that game! Fan has also been tied to the word “fancy,” invoking the description of an “intense liking of something, especially in the context of sports from the early 18^th century to the 19^th century. In the mid-19^th century, the term ‘the fancy’ became an Americanism to describe avid sports fans.”

So, why the protracted lecture on the word fan? The other night I was doing what I mentioned above, perusing the online sports sites and checking scores and stats for the MLB games played that day when I saw the following:

Even if you are not a fan of the game of baseball, it was hard to escape the ridiculous hype when Shohei Ohtani, a thirty year old Japanese baseball player, was signed last year by the Los Angeles Dodgers to a record-breaking contract. Actually, the more I think about it, “record-breaking” doesn’t even begin to describe what he signed: A ten year contract paying him $700,000,000.00. Yes, that is seven hundred million dollars! While this in itself is mind boggling, the terms of the contract are even more mind boggling. For the ten years of the contract (2024-2034) Ohtani will be paid $2,000,000.00 per year. The remaining $680,000,000.00 is scheduled to be paid out in $68,000,000.00 installments on July 1 every year from 2034-2043. Now this is what I call a “nest egg.” He is, by all accounts, a pretty amazing baseball player, and a rarity these days as he is a star at pitching, batting, and stealing bases, a very rare skill set for an MLB player, especially when you take into consideration that all MLB teams employ players at ridiculous salaries that might pitch only one inning in a game and do nothing else. Ohtani was on another MLB team, the Los Angeles Angels, before being snatched up by the Dodgers where he played for six years, earning a total of $42,269,259.00. Not exactly chump change, but when you consider that he will be paid roughly $26,000,000.00 more than his total earnings from the Angels for ten years after his playing days are over (he may choose to play past 40, but…). It does give one pause.

Fast forward to the other night and the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Florida Marlins where Ohtani set a major league record with his 50^th home run of the season and his 50^th stolen base. No player has ever done this before, let alone a pitcher, even though after having elbow surgery in the off-season, he has not pitched one inning this season. When I watched the video of the home run and the subsequent reaction from the fans in the stands, I was blown away. It was a raucous standing ovation and the noise from the crowd was deafening, and it kept going on long after Ohtani disappeared into the dugout. As is often the case when this happens, Ohtani walked back out onto the field, tipped his hat and waved to the fans in a show of respect and appreciation for the recognition of his historic accomplishment. Nothing unusual about this, except for the fact that the 15,548 screaming fans that night were there to cheer on the Marlins, as the game was being played in Miami. Even if there were die-hard Marlins fans in the crowd (a tough sell when you look at their record and the fact that the ballpark was half empty), at that moment they became fans of the game and a player that made baseball history. And let’s not forget that these are Florida fans, cheering for a Japanese player who speaks through an interpreter. Just saying. Fans. It’s a complicated word!

Los Angeles 2024

When I first saw this picture when it showed up on one of my social media feeds a day or two after the start of RNC, July 15, 2024, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But it sure got me thinking, and thinking, and thinking. The first thing that popped into my head was that pithy saying we have all heard at some time or another: “A picture is worth a thousand words,” positing that “complex and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single image, which conveys its meaning or essence more effectively that a mere verbal description.” However, I have a feeling that when the “dust” settles on this country after November 5^th, there will have been much more than a thousand words written on this picture and what it represents, with many more to follow. And yes, the “ideas” that this picture evokes are certainly “multiple” and “complex.”

The second thing that popped into my head, almost immediately after the first one, was a song title: “Every Picture Tells a Story,” from Rod Stewart’s third (1971) studio album of the same name. Why? Because this woman’s face, along with her “fashion” accessories, certainly have a story to tell, but to whom she is telling this story and what exactly it is, remains to be seen. And for those of us looking at the photo, well, everyone is going to have their own interpretation of what they see and what they feel it is saying to them. But it wasn’t just the title of the song that entered into my head, although it is certainly apropos; it was the lyrics as well. The very first stanza has this to say: “Spent some time feeling inferior / Standing in front of my mirror / Combed my hair in a thousand ways / But I came out looking the same.” What do you suppose was going through this woman’s mind when she looked in the mirror before heading out the door to attend the convention? Later on in the song, stanza nine to be exact, Stewart sings: “Wait a minute / I firmly believed that I didn’t need anyone but me / I sincerely thought I was so complete / Look how wrong you can be.” For myself, this last stanza speaks volumes about this photo. To me, the look on her face is one of resignation, a submission, if you will, that is saying: “I am doing what needs to be done to save my country…I think.” To me this photo is screaming doubt with a capital D.

I am not an expert on physiognomy (face reading), the “practice of assessing a person’s character or personality from their outer appearance – especially the face,” but it is very difficult to look at this picture and not have one’s mind trying to figure out what they are looking at. It is a practice that falls, not surprisingly, under the contemporary definition of pseudoscience, because of the unsupportable claims one makes from their viewing, like the ones I made above. Despite this fact, it is nonetheless a widespread practice, with newfound interest in the subject because of artificial intelligence. No, I will not be going down that rabbit hole. Given that this practice dates back to the ancient Greeks, the word coming from two Greek words: ‘physis’ meaning “nature” and ‘gnomon’ meaning “judge” or “interpreter,” there exists a list of what are called “universal facial expressions,” which are as follows: 1. Anger; 2. Contempt; 3. Disgust; 4. Fear; 5. Happiness; 6. Sadness; 7. Surprise. In 2020, subsequent research into facial expressions resulted in a second, expanded list, with some of the same as above, some new ones, and some that were re-branded: 1. Amusement; 2. Anger; 3. Awe; 4. Concentration; 5. Confusion; 6. Contempt; 7. Contentment; 8. Desire; 9. Disappointment; 10. Doubt; 11. Elation; 12. Interest; 13. Pain; 14. Sadness, 15. Surprise; 16. Triumph. So many to pick from when looking at this photo!

I feel it is only fair to give you a shot at practicing your own physiognomy skills. Take your time, soak in the face in front of you. What do you see?

While my initial photo at the top gives you context – the hat, the ear covering, the earrings – this photo is simply a face of a woman sitting in front of what appears to look like a microphone, so the only context you are given is that she is perhaps about to speak or answer a question. The woman in the photo is Linda Kasabian. Not ringing a bell? She was a member of the notorious Manson Family, but did not enter the house that fateful night in August of 1969, and ended up as the prosecution’s main witness, escaping prosecution herself. My question to you is this: Do you see anything in this woman’s face that would lead you to believe that she was a member of this cult, or any cult, for that matter? The reason for this physiognomy “test” is that I have heard, on numerous occasions over the airwaves, people making connections to Trump’s followers as part of his “cult.” My usual reaction, after reading or hearing this, is to chalk it up to what I like to call the “now-we-got-your-attention-posts” (otherwise known as click bait), designed to titillate, captivate, aggravate, motivate, infuriate, frustrate, intimidate, or perhaps a combination of “ates.” However, the more I looked at the photo of this woman wearing a MAGA hat with the numbers 45-47 on the side, and her ear in a white bandage – a “tribute” to Trump’s gunshot wound – and the cactus earrings with the stars and stripes motif, the more I began to wonder if the word “cult,” and the associations that go with it, are perhaps truer than any of us would care to believe.

I do not have one single shred of evidence of any kind to substantiate this, other than a queasy feeling in my stomach after reading about Manson (The Manson Family), Jones (The People’s Temple), Koresh (The Branch Davidians), Newton (The Sullivanians), and Applewhite (Heaven’s Gate) … okay, queasy may not quite describe it! We all know what happened with these cults, and I am not for a minute suggesting that MAGA and Trump worshipers are headed for a similar fate, however the one thing (there are maybe others) that all these groups have in common is the charisma of their leader, for better or worse. When I watched and listened to the leader of the “Magamites” (hey, it needed a name) during the recent debate tell the viewing public on national television that immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s cats and dogs, or that there are some states that allow abortions after birth, the idea of a cult became a whole lot clearer for me. How can anyone hear the above and say: “Yup, this is my guy?” There may or may not be an answer to this question, no more than there is for murdering, or drinking poison Kool-Aid, or whatever else groups of people have done en masse because their charismatic leader told them to… You know, like mount an insurrection of the Capitol.

On a side note, but related to my initial photo, “ears” appear to be a theme for this year’s election. In the immediate fallout since the debate aired – the left saying that Harris crushed it, the right saying it was three against one – the close-up photo below (that is making its rounds on social media) of Harris at the podium with an arrow pointing to her left ear, and the earring she’s wearing, telling us that it was an “audio earring,” completes the ear theme. Is there any evidence pointing to this as being true? Who needs evidence when everyone on your “side” just believes everything that is said, which essentially amounts to 74 million people (Trump’s popular vote figure for 2020), saying: “Cheater!” So, yes we should celebrate Harris’s clear “victory” the other night, but we should also keep in mind that there a whole whack of people out there who see it differently.

Los Angeles 2024

If you read my title and immediately started singing to yourself – “Did you ever have to make up your mind? / And pick up one and leave the other behind? / It’s not often easy and not often kind. / Did you ever have to make up your mind?” – give yourself two points. Why two points, you might ask? Well, according to Lynn Vareck, a political scientist from UCLA (in a recent interview on NPR on the upcoming debate, and how likely we are to see significant shifts in voter’s perceptions), she said: “We’re really at the point in this election where shifts are going to be maybe a point, maybe if something really big happens, two points.” All of this, of course, is predicated on polls, which are notoriously biased and often wrong.

What spurred my memory for this particular song by The Lovin’ Spoonful, from the pen of John Sebastian, were two things. Firstly, it was a conversation I was having with my wife last night about the upcoming debate (she has to watch for educational reasons – yes, teachers have it tough!) and “undecided” voters. I, of course, am completely skeptical that, given what is at stake in this election, or at least what we are being told is at stake – ad nauseum – is that anyone could possibly be “undecided.” I mean, what are they waiting for, a sign? Really? From whom? Secondly, when I woke up this morning I picked up the latest New Yorker magazine (after playing all the online word games… enough said) and started to read an article by Tyler Foggatt for the magazine’s “Talk of the Town” feature, titled “The Pop-Culture Vote.” The article is, first and foremost, about celebrity endorsements of candidates, and “who” said what about “whom.” One of the biggest stars in the news these days is Taylor Swift, and it did not take very long into the article for her name to appear (second sentence in fact), and what followed was a commentary on the “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts seen at rallies. The second paragraph begins with the following:

Swift has not endorsed either Trump or Kamala Harris, but the question of whether she will has become a subplot in an election seemingly so tight that something as small as the right endorsement – or the wrong meme – threatens to shift the balance. 

The article then goes on to discuss how important “coolness” has been in past elections, as it is in this one, and then postulates that if “coolness is the goal,” then the most “effective celebrity endorsements are arguably ones that speak to a candidate’s vibe” (emphasis added). An example of this, which made me laugh out loud when I read it, is when Johnny Rotten, of Sex Pistols fame, was seen wearing a MAGA t-shirt, “the message – which may have resonated more than any policy proposal – was that supporting Trump was punk.” Punk? More like punk-ass which, in the popular vernacular means: “Obnoxious, stupid or otherwise unworthy of respect.” So, yeah, definitely PUNK!

The debate, which airs tonight (Sept. 10, 2024) on ABC, will be relegated to another chapter in this election titled: “Oh, and Then That Happened,” by the time anyone reads this (I am open to be proven wrong!). I suspect it will be the largest chapter in what promises to be a flood of books hitting bookstores and e-readers come November 6^th. Before I read any of the above, I was, and still am, very skeptical about what “important” take-aways we will have after the 90 minute “debate.” At this stage of the game, and I feel it has become just that, a “game,” what is the likelihood of there being any worthwhile commentary on, shall we say, policy? The whole point of a “debate,” which the dictionary informs us is “a formal discussion on a particular topic in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward,” is the exchange of “viewpoints,” “positions,” “ideologies,” on an issue. What we are going to be subjected to is not going to resemble anything like that, at all. How can it? If opposing microphones are toggled off when one or the other is speaking, there really cannot be an effective dialogue between the two. If, as the rules of the debate stipulate, “Each candidate will be allotted two minutes to answer each question [from the two ABC moderators, David Muir, and Linsey Davis,] with a two-minute rebuttal, and an additional minute for a follow-up, clarification, or response,” what are we going to be able to evaluate? My response to this questions is one word: “Nothing.” Sure, while this format might work if both participants had the ability to make their positions on a particular issue clear and meaningful in two minutes, then having the microphones off might not matter that much. But that is not the case for this debate. When was the last time anyone has ever heard Trump say anything on anything clearly? One need only look to his most recent “rants” on his most ironically named blog in the history of blogs, to understand what awaits Harris and the viewing public tonight.

To be clear, Sebastian, in his song, was writing about having to choose between two girls, one described as having “big blue eyes,” and “cute as a bunny,” while the other is described as “mousy.” I am pretty certain that most of us would like to think that a country’s election should come down to more than what someone looks like… well, that might be asking far too much this time around, and possibly for the foreseeable future. And, if you remember your history, the first ever televised debate, which was between JFK and Nixon in 1960, did not bolster Nixon’s chances in the election because he was sweating profusely on camera, making him look rather unappealing. It has been said that those listening to the debate on the radio actually felt that Nixon had won the debate. That may be so, but he lost the election. Was it all because of a sweaty upper lip? However, in this election, we are not talking about “looks,” per se, we are talking about the ability to “attract the attention and admiration of others, and to be seen as a leader,” in a word, charisma. In Mark Leibovich’s Atlantic piece: “Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump,” he discusses just that, Trump’s innate ability to “wow,” first starting with all his sworn enemies in his own “party.” Leibovich, writing about past interviews he has had with Trump about those sworn enemies within, writes:

They might speak badly about me now, but they won’t later, Trump said. They like to say they are ‘public servants,’ he added, his voice dripping with derision at the word servant. But they would eventually submit to him and fear him. They would ‘evolve,’ as they say in politics. ‘It will be very easy; I can make them evolve,’ Trump told me. ‘They will evolve.’

And so, they have. So, time will tell if the so-called “undecideds” will be swayed and “evolve,” one way or the other, by anything that is said at this debate. Or perhaps it really is going to take a slogan, or a meme, or a t-shirt, or an endorsement from Swift to tilt the scales. As the song’s last refrain informs us: “And then you bet you’d better finally decide. / And say yes to one and let the other one ride. / There’s so many changes and tears you must hide. / Did you ever have to finally decide?” Yes we do.

In the meantime, since stress levels about what is going on are at an all-time high, why don’t you sit back and listen while thinking about a t-shirt I’m thinking about designing?

Harris

or

Trump

Make Up Your Mind!

Feel free to sing along!

Los Angeles 2024